1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to systems and protocols supporting transactions among diverse clients coupled to a network; and more particularly to systems and protocols supporting commercial transactions among platforms having variant architectures.
2. Description of Related Art
The Internet and other communications networks provide avenues for communication among people and computer platforms which are being used for a wide variety of transactions, including commercial transactions in which participants buy and sell goods and services. Many efforts are underway to facilitate commercial transactions on the Internet. However, with many competing standards, in order to execute a transaction, the parties to the transaction must agree in advance on the protocols to be utilized, and often require custom integration of the platform architectures to support such transactions. Commercial processes internal to a particular node not compatible with agreed upon standards, may require substantial rework for integration with other nodes. Furthermore, as a company commits to one standard or the other, the company becomes locked-in to a given standardized group of transacting parties, to the exclusion of others.
A good overview of the challenges met by Internet commerce development is provided in Tenenbaum, et al., "Eco System: An Internet Commerce Architecture", Computer, May 1997, pp. 48-55.
To open commercial transactions on the Internet, standardization of architectural frameworks is desired. Platforms developed to support such commercial frameworks include IBM Commerce Point, Microsoft Internet Commerce Framework, Netscape ONE (Open Network Environment), Oracle NCA (Network Computing Architecture), and Sun/JAVASoft JECF (JAVA Electronic Commerce Framework).
In addition to these proprietary frameworks, programming techniques, such as common distributed object model based on CORBA IIOP (Common Object Request Broker Architecture Internet ORB Protocol), are being pursued. Use of the common distributed object model is intended to simplify the migration of enterprise systems to systems which can inter-operate at the business application level for electronic commerce. However, a consumer or business using one framework is unable to execute transactions on a different framework. This limits the growth of electronic commerce systems.
Companies implementing one framework will have an application programming interface API which is different than the API's supporting other frameworks. Thus, it is very difficult for companies to access each others business services, without requiring adoption of common business system interfaces. The development of such business system interfaces at the API level requires significant cooperation amongst the parties which is often impractical.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide a framework which facilitates interaction amongst diverse platforms in a communication network. Such system should facilitate spontaneous commerce between trading partners without custom integration or prior agreement on industry wide standards. Further, such systems should encourage incremental path to business automation, to eliminate much of the time, cost and risks of traditional systems integration.
Overall, it is desirable to provide an electronic commerce system that replaces the closed trading partner networks based on proprietary standards with open markets.